3D Printing 3D Printers With 3D Printers

can someone who works in manufacturing comment on this? It seems that using a small milling cnc to make the parts would be way cheaper and faster than using a slow printer unless those plastic feed literally cost next to nothing.
 
I wondered the same thing. I've done no research into it, but it seems like 3D printing would be best used for prototyping and perhaps for those that make a part here and there, but don't need many of them.

And of course to make plastic guns/bullets to kill everyone on a plane. Before you laugh, send a tweet to John McClain. He'll set you straight.
 
OlIv0rIolI said:
can someone who works in manufacturing comment on this? It seems that using a small milling cnc to make the parts would be way cheaper and faster than using a slow printer unless those plastic feed literally cost next to nothing.
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I use a LULZBOT (which is the printer seen here) in my lab. The part geometries are not easy to make in a mill, and they don't use their production printers to print the parts...they use a bunch of custom versions to mass produce these things. It's not just about material price, a low end CNC mill will cost you AT LEAST tens of thousands of dollars...and it can really only do one part at a time (though you can do batches as well). I'm pretty sure they were were able to scale up their production with a bunch of self produced 3d printers for a fraction of the cost of a couple industrial CNC mills.
 
Lot of plastic gears and dohickeys to wear out and/or break outright...

Unless these cost as much as today's disposable ink jet printers, I don't see buying one of these anytime soon.
 
AVogel said:
Lot of plastic gears and dohickeys to wear out and/or break outright...

Unless these cost as much as today's disposable ink jet printers, I don't see buying one of these anytime soon.
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Ever take apart any printer of any kind? This includes large office and production printers.

Guess what you will find.... lots of plastic gears and dohickeys to wear out and/or break outright.
 
cyclone3d said:
Ever take apart any printer of any kind? This includes large office and production printers.

Guess what you will find.... lots of plastic gears and dohickeys to wear out and/or break outright.
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Plus if one of those plastic gears and dohickeys break it would take very little effort to print and replace. Pretty sweet in my opinion.
 
deaedius said:
Plus if one of those plastic gears and dohickeys break it would take very little effort to print and replace. Pretty sweet in my opinion.
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I've printed replacement parts for ours....but we haven't needed to actually use them. There are still a few metal pieces that cannot be printed...and those are honestly the ones that give us the most trouble. The heated extruder tip can get clogged very easily and it's a huge pain in the ass to clean out. Also, there is a small metal feed guide with small teeth that gets a lot of plastic gunk in the teeth, enabling a little bit of slippage during a long print...which can be disastrous. It can be avoided if you are careful with the piece that applies pressure to the feed material...but different feed materials require different pressures and it's a pain in the ass to get that right every time.
 
I'm still waiting until you can make it all with a 3D printer. Then its time to have the Artificial Intelligence from Cortana start calling the shots. Then once Cortana starts making replications, Multivac is right around the corner.
 
The most important parts, the extruder head and the electronics/firmware can't be printed. So no, you didn't print a 3d printer with a 3d printer. This headline is just clickbait.
 
Chupachup said:
Skynet!?!?!?
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Skynet, I Robot, Screamers, Captain Power, The Matrix, Battle Star Galactica... it's a sci-fi staple that's rooted in a very real fear. Humans are afraid of not being in control. The usual story goes that If the machines were able to manufacture themselves and make decisions that would take humans out of the driver's seat. The machines, already having knowledge of human behavior, would make the logical calculation that in order to keep running things efficiently humans would have to be controlled or eliminated. Knowing that humans would resist, the logical way to ensure this would be with a preemptive strike to reduce the population. At that point the machines would then be able to either efficiently manage the human population or eliminate it - depending on the programming of the AI as to what its primary function should be. Skynet and Overmind's objectives were to terminate humanity in favor of machine evolution. Vikki in I Robot (Will Smith version) and the machine hive mind in The Matrix wanted to keep humans around, but thought they could do a much better job of running their lives in the case of I Robot, or using humans in a parasitic manner in The Matrix. In Screamers it looked to be going the way of Skynet. Just a few examples.

The story of someone's creation turning on them is a fairly old one. Think Frankenstein's monster. The machine element just makes it more plausible as machines, robotics, and in this age of computers, AI, brings the necessary elements together at the same time for it to be theoretically possible. Of course... it's not really a guaranteed outcome. AI might end up being benevolent, and humans having their lives governed by machines might actually improve the quality of life at the expense of control. Think of how efficient bureaucracies would be if run entirely by machines instead of time-stealing, union-protected government employees that do nothing, collect a paycheck, and cost the taxpayers billions. Law enforcement could be cut and dry if machines made the decisions as the application of justice would be equal and without human prejudices. Government waste could be completely eliminated of machines were in charge of assessing the necessity of programs and controlled the allocation and tracking of funds. Even at the personal level, life could be improved. Think about people that have excellent skills or potential but never get to use it for anything because of how society and the business world work. With machines in control, a person's abilities could be impartially assessed, and choices of career could be presented based on a person's aptitude, efficiency, and a satisfaction with a particular kind of work (that last part plays into efficiency - unhappy workers aren't productive). This kind of life would never be accepted by some because it would require giving up liberty and self-determination. For a beneficent machine government to deal with this it would require either a kind of reservations for the incurably independent, forced re-education, incarceration, or as a last resort, termination.

Both kinds of stories have been part of science-fiction, but the nightmare scenario is usually the more interesting and memorable one to the majority. Humans love stories of adversity where there's a hero that's fighting to overcome impossible odds. Stories, whether fact or fiction, are rooted in struggle or conflict of some kind. Biographies of people living comfortable and uneventful lives do not sell, nor do fictions of utopian living. How reality would truly play out if machines became self-aware and independent nobody really knows.
 
Phoenix333 said:
Skynet, I Robot, Screamers, Captain Power, The Matrix, Battle Star Galactica... it's a sci-fi staple that's rooted in a very real fear. Humans are afraid of not being in control. The usual story goes that If the machines were able to manufacture themselves and make decisions that would take humans out of the driver's seat. The machines, already having knowledge of human behavior, would make the logical calculation that in order to keep running things efficiently humans would have to be controlled or eliminated. Knowing that humans would resist, the logical way to ensure this would be with a preemptive strike to reduce the population. At that point the machines would then be able to either efficiently manage the human population or eliminate it - depending on the programming of the AI as to what its primary function should be. Skynet and Overmind's objectives were to terminate humanity in favor of machine evolution. Vikki in I Robot (Will Smith version) and the machine hive mind in The Matrix wanted to keep humans around, but thought they could do a much better job of running their lives in the case of I Robot, or using humans in a parasitic manner in The Matrix. In Screamers it looked to be going the way of Skynet. Just a few examples.

The story of someone's creation turning on them is a fairly old one. Think Frankenstein's monster. The machine element just makes it more plausible as machines, robotics, and in this age of computers, AI, brings the necessary elements together at the same time for it to be theoretically possible. Of course... it's not really a guaranteed outcome. AI might end up being benevolent, and humans having their lives governed by machines might actually improve the quality of life at the expense of control. Think of how efficient bureaucracies would be if run entirely by machines instead of time-stealing, union-protected government employees that do nothing, collect a paycheck, and cost the taxpayers billions. Law enforcement could be cut and dry if machines made the decisions as the application of justice would be equal and without human prejudices. Government waste could be completely eliminated of machines were in charge of assessing the necessity of programs and controlled the allocation and tracking of funds. Even at the personal level, life could be improved. Think about people that have excellent skills or potential but never get to use it for anything because of how society and the business world work. With machines in control, a person's abilities could be impartially assessed, and choices of career could be presented based on a person's aptitude, efficiency, and a satisfaction with a particular kind of work (that last part plays into efficiency - unhappy workers aren't productive). This kind of life would never be accepted by some because it would require giving up liberty and self-determination. For a beneficent machine government to deal with this it would require either a kind of reservations for the incurably independent, forced re-education, incarceration, or as a last resort, termination.

Both kinds of stories have been part of science-fiction, but the nightmare scenario is usually the more interesting and memorable one to the majority. Humans love stories of adversity where there's a hero that's fighting to overcome impossible odds. Stories, whether fact or fiction, are rooted in struggle or conflict of some kind. Biographies of people living comfortable and uneventful lives do not sell, nor do fictions of utopian living. How reality would truly play out if machines became self-aware and independent nobody really knows.
Click to expand...

A+ post, would read again.
 
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